Saturday, October 12, 2013

Health I-Don't-Care - Bucks County Courier Times November 15, 2013

OK, so we’re
trying to make healthcare better by making it worse which should definitely end
well.Healthcare is currently 1/6th
of the US GDP and growing much faster than the economy.Yay!

Why all the
soaring costs amidst the best & brightest minds in the world?Why the inefficient delivery with 40 million
Americans still without health insurance?The underlying cause of all of this confusion is a complex system of
payments to providers that comes directly from government and private insurance
3rd parties rather than directly from the consumer.And the fix that you all voted for further
removes the patient in favor of someone in a basement cubicle.

Healthcare is
no different from any other consumer item and nothing will improve until the
patient is in charge.Try getting sick today
and navigating through the current system and then report your findings.Multiple medical issues will exponentially
intensify the “human pinball” effect through this fragmented consumer-unfocused
industry.

This all began
in the 1930’s where health insurance was attached to employment.All was well (even though salaries were
reduced by the value of the coverage) until someone in Congress got the bright
idea to give companies a tax break equal to their health insurance costs.Health insurance was now implemented for the
benefit of the employer with one-size-fits-all plans.

We’ve
continued to morph in the wrong direction ever since with all sorts of barriers
to innovation, malpractice malfeasance (that takes billions of health dollars
away from health) and other issues too numerous and onerous to mention.We’ve actually done quite well in spite of
agenda-focused healthcare, but have reached the tipping point requiring some
serious medicine.

The only way
to properly price the $60 aspirin is to create a mechanism where the patient
shops around for the best value for a proper aspirin and pays the aspirin
seller directly.The same exact concept
would even apply to brain surgery, for example.A free-for-all is created when the customer doesn’t care what the price
is so there needs to be an incentive for the patient to shop for their own
medical care.

The insurance
company would pay the patient directly who would in turn pay the provider.That’s the simplified version, but is the
basic theme of the most important concept to fix the mess that we’ve
created.A consumer-focused healthcare
market would be created that would serve the patient.Resources would shift, outcomes would
radically improve and costs would plummet.

Not only would
the poor benefit more than most, but there’d even be competition for
pre-existing conditions.Business models
would be turned upside down which would, in turn, make them right side up.

Of course all
sorts of government malpractice and abuse would have to be eliminated so that insurance
policies could be tailored to individual needs and resources properly allocated,
but this utopia need not be an illusion.Making the right changes would be easier than not.Our healthcare system need not be terminal as
long as we put our petty political affiliations aside and vote, over time, for
the cure.

Many will say
that the health industry is too complicated for the common person to have
choice.Not really. What would happen would be just like in any
other industry where the very well informed minority (who has already done the
research for you) would drive accurate information, great options and intelligent
decisions.

Where do we
go from here?Probably nowhere so I may
have to leave the planet in search of intelligent life.I do,
however, think that we’re capable of much better so maybe we can run with that.Either way - I don’t really care anymore and
am just going to not get sick or injured.But if you do get sick or injured maybe you can scream for a politician
or a lawyer.